“We are trying to hire for attrition, meet mandates of staffing levels, there’s an executive order that we’re trying to hire more agents and that’s one of the messages we want to send out is that we’re hiring and this is a way we can reach potential applicants that have been cleared as agents,” Agent Christopher Sullivan in the Tucson Sector Border Patrol public affairs office explained to Tucson News Now.

Hiring former agents is easier than hiring new ones because they’ve already passed a background check and have experience that doesn’t require as training.

“Some of the benefits of rehiring previous agents is that they don’t have to travel to the academy and get retrained. They’re already trained as agents previously, so it saves us money as in training costs and it also strea

A Border Patrol canine that went missing during a tracking operation in Arizona on Feb. 20 has not been found.

Dunja, a dog used by the Tucson Sector Border Patrol, was separated from his handler during an operation on the Tohono O’odham Nation near Papago Farms, Tucson News Now reports.

Agents continue to search for Dunja, who is 4 years old and has worked with the Border Patrol since August 2016.

The Tucson Sector has more than 100 canines.

The dogs can fetch up to $10,000 because they are already trained.

“They do go through several weeks of training,” saidDaniel Hernandez, spokesman with the Tucson sector. “The canines become a team within the agent and they spend a very long time together as a partner. Conducting all kinds of simulations at the training facility. So there is a huge bond between the canine and the handler.”

Border Patrol was slapped with sanctions for destroying evidence that was part of an ongoing civil lawsuit.

American AlJazeera reports that Judge David C. Bury issued the sanctions Monday in a case involving three immigrants who allege Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector routinely held immigrants in inhumane conditions.

“The Court concludes the destruction of the video-tape recordings made prior to this Court’s August 14, 2015, Order was, at best, negligent and was certainly willful. Defendants provide no explanation why, in response to Plaintiffs’ notifications regarding litigation, the Defendants did not undertake the efforts initiated in response to the Court’s August 14 Order,” Bury wrote.

The sanctions require Border Patrol to produce all existing video from the Tucson Sector since June 10.